The Milk of Sorrow_Peru

Olive Films

Magaly Solier and Barbara Lazon in the Peruvian film “The Milk of Sorrow,” directed by Claudia Llosa.

A Trauma in Peru

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

As tense as a clenched fist and just as communicative, Fausta (Magaly Solier), the heroine of “The Milk of Sorrow,” scuttles around her mountainside neighborhood in Lima, peering from beneath bangs like guillotine blades. Her mother has just died, leaving Fausta with a deathbed song of rape and violence suffered during “the terrors,” Peru’s decades of civil strife. As a defense against similar violations — and, indeed, any sexual connection — Fausta has blocked her vagina with a potato, oblivious to the physical consequences.

Plumbing the generational reverberations of trauma (believed by the indigenous population to be passed on through a mother’s milk), the Peruvian writer and director Claudia Llosa (the niece of the author Mario Vargas Llosa) explores the possibility of female empowerment in a culture suffocated by superstition and poverty. To pay for her mother’s funeral, Fausta becomes the maid of a wealthy pianist (Susi Sánchez), who encourages the girl to compose her own songs. But when her employer steals her music, it becomes clear that Fausta’s real oppressor isn’t the violence of the past but the exploitation of the present.
Beautifully framed and not without humor (especially in the lively wedding preparations of Fausta’s fussy cousin, which include a “mobile buffet”), “The Milk of Sorrow” is constrained by a rarefied screenplay and a near-mute central performance.
A tender, tentative turn by Efraín Solis, as a gardener who tries to breach Fausta’s defenses, offers temporary relief from the emotional uniformity, but it’s not enough to rescue a story limited less by Fausta’s reserve than by the filmmaker’s. 
THE MILK OF SORROW
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Written and directed by Claudia Llosa; director of photography, Natasha Braier; edited by Frank Gutierrez; art directors, Susana Torres and Patricia Bueno; produced by Antonio Chavarrias, José Maria Morales and Ms. Llosa; released by Olive Films. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. In Spanish and Quechua, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Magaly Solier (Fausta), Susi Sánchez (Aida), Efraín Solis (Noé) and Marino Ballón (Tío Lucido).